Collaborative Experiential Learning (CEL) is an instructional approach developed in my work with the Core Curriculum on Childhood Trauma at the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

This instructional approach emerged through iterative community participatory design whereas I played the role of instructional and process designer optimizing my work to meet the needs of trauma-informed professional development in behavioral health systems and our community of curriculum facilitators who were taking it out into those systems.

This curriculum serves professional psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers so it must meet rigorous professional training standards. It also serves teachers, school counselors, clinical care staff, and others in youth-serving systems so it must be accessible to varied audiences and supportive of developing trauma-informed lenses in their professional interactions.

CEL is a structured adaptation of problem-based learning (PBL). Trained facilitators guide groups of learners through collaborative explorations of complex stories around child trauma. Case-based reasoning is a classic PBL approach. Case-based reasoning is a classic PBL approach. We have adapted it with facilitator guidance in co-creating a trauma-informed learning climate, and social emotional and cognitive load supports.

The first uniqueness of CEL is that facilitators provide the learners with practice in creating and maintaining a trauma-informed relational climate. This supports their context learning and their professional skills in their roles. Second, facilitators incorporate grounding exercises and reflection practices to explore provider wellness. Additionally, learners explore how their own identities interplay with their professional roles and how to use systems-thinking conceptualization about identities and contexts in traumatic experiences and healing. A third facilitation aspect is managing the cognitive load of each section of the case. The facilitator aligns their learning objectives with the case materials and dynamically guides the group through their processing tasks and activities.  

These facilitation aspects of CEL transform a classic PBL approach of case-based reasoning improving its power to support complex reasoning and providing practice in necessary professional social-emotional skills and strategies.